You Gotta Get In To Get Out

Via the Prime Minister's Residence, evidence that Abe and Company are in so preoccupied with fostering the image of engagement that they are failing to pay close attention to what they are saying.

Consider, if you will, the announcement on the Residence website of yet another gathering of worthies, this time tackling the relationship between the central government and the regions:

Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization Reform
Tuesday, May 28, 2013


Photograph of the Prime Minister delivering an address at the meeting of the Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization Reform 

(Source)

You caught that?

The government has, inside the Prime Minister's Office, a headquarters for decentralization.

A Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization inside the Prime Minister's Office.

A Headquarters...for Promoting Decentralization.

Call it a Task Force on Decentralization. Call it a Study Group on Decentralization.

But please never become so completely inured to the everyday meaning of words as to be blind to the glaring oxymoron of a Headquarters (honbu) for Promoting Decentralization (chiho bunken) located inside the Prime Minister's Office.

Trivial? Perhaps.　

But indicative of a preference for a semi-manic force feeding of change initiatives over governing.

Stumbles On The March To Glory

Bad news for the voters who thought that the victories of Hashimoto Toru and Matsui Ichiro as mayor of Osaka City and governor of Osaka Prefecture last November would lead inexorably to Osaka Prefecture's achieving the grand and glorious status of a Metropolitan District (thus becoming "just as good as Tokyo," dangnabbit): Sakai City mayor Takenaka Osami told Hashimoto and the governor yesterday that he will not take part in any discussions aimed at compromising either the autonomy or the integrity of his city. (J)

Good news for folks who believe that Hashimoto is a taut mass of ambition in a huge hurry to mount the ladder of success because is running away from the promises he has made that he cannot keep.

The Bust Up

TH - Hashimoto. I always thought it would be Hiranuma.
MC - It's the smart move. Hashimoto was always smarter.

So it begins.

Hashimoto issues call to create new party
The Japan Times

By Setsuko Kamiya, Staff Writer - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Former Kochi Gov. Daijiro Hashimoto said Tuesday he will form a political group with an eye to creating a new political party that will work to decentralize governmental power.

Hashimoto, a half brother of the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said he hopes to launch the new party in time for the next Lower House election.

"People's lives do not exist in the Nagata-cho or Kasumigaseki districts," said Hashimoto, referring to the neighborhoods where the Diet and the government bureaucracy are situated. "They exist in the local communities. This system where the central government controls everything needs to be exterminated."

Hashimoto said his policy plan works to transfer more tax revenue and administrative power to local governments while leaving responsibility for international affairs and national security in the hands of the central government. He also said the central government should shape the policies for ensuring people's livelihoods and boosting economic growth...

Now the let's-make-a-deal, so-it's policy-you-wants free-for-all starts.

Hiranuma Takeo, the Sith Lord of Japanese politics, should be kicking himself with a booted foot. His announcement of the formation of a new party, long threatened, was supposed to trigger the avalanche of realignment.

Instead, he gets pipped by Hashimoto Daijirō, one of the most consistently popular politicians around, pushing for deregulation--a subject which he, a former governor, actually cares about--unlike some commissions we could mention.

What a Hashimoto-led party lacks in strength right now it can more than make up in sense later. From all indications, Hashimoto understands decentralization, both why it is necessary and how it should be done.

Whether sensible policies sensibly carried out can be an electoral winner is a question. The national injury sob story of the revisionist right tugs at the heartstrings of persons on either side of the urban vs. rural divide, the most obvious social division in the archipelago. It has a proven track record as a vote-getter on the national scale.

For at least today, however, the "Hiranuma Conservative Party" spectre has to cede the camera to a less maudlin political project. If the announcement of the formation of Hiranuma's party comes too soon after this announcement, it could even be portrayed as a "rushed response to the Hashimoto challenge."

Hiranuma, who has been noodling about in round after round of ryotei politics, discussing realignment with Japan New Party leader Watanuki Tamisuke and New Daichi Party leader Suzuki Muneo over very expensive meals in exclusive traditional eateries, has blown his chance to be the first out of the blocks.

Then again, a person with an obvious contempt for so many would hardly understand the concept of product rollout and the importance of being first-to-market, now would he?

Later - Oh darn. Tobias Harris of Observing Japan has been bitten by the classic American film bug too.

A Wish List, Opened

How?

That is the inescapable question.

After the hoopla and security overkill of the Toyako Summit dies down, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet will be left with seven weeks of housekeeping duties and summer reading time before the start of the extraordinary session. The political classes will disperse to their home districts for seven weeks of vital constituent hand-holding and, when appropriate, backslapping—-an ominously long time for politicians to be immersed in a bath of personal and local complaints. In the absence of an election, the nation will largely put politics aside, focusing its attention on what is truly important: the Koshien high school baseball tournament--which probably will not, for demographic and wealth reasons, be won by a team from the Hokuriku, Chugoku, Shikoku or Tohoku regions.

But once this idyllic summer—possibly the last summer of the LDP's era of dominance—comes to an end, the Prime Minister, his Cabinet, his party and the ruling coalition will find themselves facing a daunting question.

How?

How will it be possible, in just a few months before the New Year, to draft and pass legislation

- reforming the payment system of the wildly unpopular eldercare system
- fulfilling the first phase of decentralization
- laying the groundwork for a fundamental rebalancing of the tax system
- renewing the Indian Ocean Maritime Self Defense Forces dispatch
- shifting the gasoline tax revenues from road construction to the general fund

over the determined opposition and delaying tactics of large segments of the Liberal Democratic Party, not to mention the knee-jerk opposition and delaying tactics of the majority in the House of Councillors?

And what about the big items on the agenda, the looming multifaceted issues requiring a flurry of action after years of benign neglect, such as:

- providing for the physical and financial needs of burgeoning population of the very old, at a reasonable cost
- righting the crippled, parasitic economies of the rural areas
- providing the legal and ideological framework for an influx of immigrant labor, both skilled and unskilled, temporary and permanent
-reversing the growing number of suicides
- fulfilling promises made at international events like TICAD and Toyako
- increasing the birth rate
- reversing the runaway destruction of the environment, both global and local
- preparing for a post-hydrocarbon-burning world
- providing for Japan's security as the world's power relationships undergo a phase of rapid realignment (and keeping the Americans happy with the Japan-U.S. security alliance through a more gradual and less episodic evolution)

all while the two largest parties in the Diet do not speak to each other...the bureaucracy is demoralized and despised...and the press and intellectuals are perceived to be shabby, corruptible and narcissistic?

How is it possible to change everything that must be changed--when everything that must be changed is .....everything?

As for Decentralization Reforms, May the Government Show the Ultimate in Respect Toward the Recommendations!

The title, as far as I can figure, of Friday's Yomiuri Shimbun editorial admonishing the government and the people to take the first set of recommendations of the Commission for for the Promotion of Decentralization Reforms (chihō bunken kaikaku suishin iinkai - council chairman: Itochū chairman Niwa Uichirō) as seriously as humanly possible.

Yes, there is a reason why I call it "Pravda by the Palace."

As for the recommendations of the Commission, a cursory glance indicates what seems to be way too much promotion of decentralization and damnably little commitment to reform.

Later - For an example of what I mean by "way too much promotion of decentralization..." to the possible detriment of actual reform and popular welfare, here's my take on one of the recommendations lauded in the above-mentioned editorial.

Light Blue for Boys, Pink for Girls, Yellow for Flashing Warning Lights

Chihō bunken - "decentralization"-- the verbal smokescreen deployed by those advocating pseudo-reforms that eviscerate citizens services while failing to increase transparency or stamp out fraud and waste. See "shell game" and "horse manure."

According to today's Yomiuri Shimbun, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour is considering relaxing national minimal standards on the facilities and grounds for day care centers (hoikuen) in favor of allowing local municipalities to set their own standards.

Uh-oh. A problem nobody thought existed is about to be solved by the tempting local municipalities to skimp on childcare facilities.

Niwa Uchirō, the chairman of general trading giant Itochū and the Chairman of the Commission for for the Promotion of Government Decentralization (Chihō Bunken Kaikaku Suishin Iinkai) presents the planned relaxation of national standards of the sizes of rooms and playgrounds as responding to the regional (environmental?) variation:

"Having a single standard from Hokkaidō to Okinawa is bizarre. There is no scientific basis for it."

But Niwa-san, the proposed revision is not about the maximum size of facilities, of the area of open space, indoors and outdoors, per child. If we were talking about taking advantage of regional differences, the ability to expand the beyond the minimum grounds would make sense--as land is abundant in all but a few areas.

The Yomiuri correspondent dutifully repeats the canard that this sudden plan to hand off to the local municipalities the ability to set the standards for child care facilities is necessary because relaxing the standards would make it possible to enroll more children in non-standard facilities, eliminating need for children to be on waiting lists.

In the example in the Yomiuri article, municipalities with children on waiting lists but insufficient open land to build a center to national standards could convert a floor of an office building near a train station into a day care center. Impoverished rural communities could convert old, unused elementary or middle schools into day care centers.

Now color me stupid, but this slide in the Ministry's own March 2008 Powerpoint presentation on Japan's day care facilities indicates to me that the Commission seems a little too eager to fulfill its mandate of promoting decentralization.

Slide #8 tells me the number of children on waiting lists to get into day care centers is 17,926.

You read that right: fewer than 18,000 children are on a waiting lists nationwide. At the same time, some 2.11 million children are currently enrolled in day care--meaning that over 99% of the children seeking immediate entry into day care centers are enrolled in facilities operating according to the current national standards.

There is no waiting list crisis.

What is more, the number of children on waiting lists has fallen by 31% over just the last five years, from 26,000 children in 2002 to under 18,000 in 2007. Given the decline in the number of children nationwide, this seems to a problem that is going to solve itself.

Furthermore, as the right graph shows, 70% of the children on waiting lists today are from 74 municipalities--with the remaining 30% coming from an additional 294 municipalities.

A small fraction of the country's total number municipalities

Now it may be the case that these municipalities are hard cases--chronically incapable of providing a sufficient number of open spaces at facilities that meet the minimum national day care center standards. Perhaps these hard-pressed municipalities need flexibility in terms of the minimal facilities so that they help their young parents.

But is the problem facilities? Some 70% of the children on waiting lists are under three years of age. The size of the facilities are usually not the issue for such children--the limiting factor is almost always is the number of caregivers that must be employed to watch over them. Under national guidelines, one caregiver can watch over 3 infants under 1 year of age or 6 toddlers of either 1 or 2 years of age.

When children turn 3 years of age and ratio of children to caregivers drops from 6:1 to 20:1--the number of kids on the waiting list falls.

The waiting list problem seems more likely an employment issue than a facilities issue.

So what is this about, this handing off of standard setting on childcare facilities to the local municipalities, having the municipalities set their own lower minimum standards for facilities, replacing the minimal standards first established in 1948 when the country was dirt poor?

Could it have anything to do with local officials possibly noticing that

a) young adults in the childbearing years vote too infrequently

b) children cannot vote at all

c) the number of children is falling

d) the number of the elderly is rising

e) young working parents (for the children to be eligible for the day care centers both parents must be working) are grateful for whatever childcare they can afford

f) the elderly, who also put heavy demands on government services, vote at the highest rate of all

g) in an era of limited resources something, somewhere has to give, doesn't it?

Of course, this is an exceptional case. One almost certainly could not find another example of decentralization encouraging the possible rationing of services out to special interest groups within the electorate.